


all is enough

by zukoscomet



Series: roots and wings [1]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst and Feels, Arguing, Established Relationship, Eventual Happy Ending, Everyone Has Issues, F/M, Fire Lady Katara, Fire Nation Politics (Avatar), Zuko (Avatar) Has Issues, idk how to tag this one this is rough
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-12 09:35:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28883271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zukoscomet/pseuds/zukoscomet
Summary: "His wife longed for a baby so keenly now that he likened it to grief. He could feel it in his heart, every hour of every day, as powerfully as if the emotions were his own. He could feel it that very moment, stabbing into him like needles. He wanted to apologise, to get on his knees and beg at her feet - for forgiveness, for more time, for her to understand - but he knew it would not comfort her. Only one thing would do that and he couldn’t give it to her."Or: Katara wants a family to call her own, but Zuko struggles with the idea.
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Series: roots and wings [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1934692
Comments: 4
Kudos: 81





	all is enough

**Author's Note:**

> I briefly covered this topic at the opening scene of the first Zutara piece I wrote, 'act of infinite optimism', which you can find as the next part of this series if you haven't yet read, but I've always wanted to come back to it since it's such a can of worms so to speak. Much as I live for soft Momtara and Dadko, I absolutely think that Zuko would struggle immensely with the whole concept of parenthood for obvious reasons and Katara, too, to a lesser extent. This is set about three years after the scene I said about above, and five or six months before the first month in 'act of infinite optimism'.
> 
> I hope I did it some justice, I definitely enjoyed writing it. Next chapter of 'the longest shortest year' is up next for any of you that follow that piece.
> 
> Stay safe!

_Production of alloy steel variants are up to 30% in the last quarter, due to production beginning on the railroad links in Caldera and an increase in exports to help with reconstruction of the Southern Air Temple._

_Production of steel alloy variants...._

_-up to 30% in the last quarter._

_-up to 30% in the last quarter._

_Railroad links in Caldera...._

_Southern Air Temple._

Katara slammed shut the report into the Fire Nation’s metal productions, the thwacking sound of the leather-bound cover bringing her more pleasure in a single second than hours of attempting to read through its contents had. It was useless. She’d been stuck on the same sentence for the past thirty minutes. She wasn't getting anywhere with it tonight.

She looked over at Zuko where he sat in the corner of their bedroom at his writing desk, his ink brush dancing over the parchment with both pace and grace. Usually she liked watching him work - she adored the concentrated frown that creased his brow and the way his bottom lip would subconsciously jut out a little further - but tonight all she wanted to do was interrupt him. A question for him had been playing on her mind for a while now, an extra distraction from the thrills of metal output.

_Just ask him. You don’t ask, you don’t get. Now is as good a time as any._

She sighed in defeat.

“Zuko?” He glanced up from his correspondence at her sudden call, immediately at her behest. “Can we talk?”

“Yeah, sure. I’m listening, I promise, I just need to get this letter sent off as soon as possible.” He smiled at her warmly, dipping the brush into the ink palette and starting the next word. Zuko always seemed to find pleasure in the plainest of domestic moments like this, and his particular good mood emboldened her further. “What’s on your mind?”

“Okay. Well... I’ve been thinking and... I-,” She swallowed as he looked up from the stack of parchment scrolls at her stumbling, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear nervously. “I was wondering how you’d feel about maybe... maybe trying for a baby soon?”

The air changed in an instant. Zuko stiffened, the line of his shoulders straightening up from where they’d slowly slumped over with fatigue as he worked. She could see the familiar old panic that had troubled him for years flood into his eyes, quickly drowning out the restful focus that she’d observed in them over the last few hours. Heavy silence blanketed the room as Zuko took a few moments to lift his stare from the lines inked on the paper in front of him and up to her instead. His jaw clenched hard and his eyes crinkled at the corners as he met her stormy blue irises, like it was physically paining him to look at her then. A heavy stone settled in her stomach as she watched him watch her. She knew what the answer was going to be the second she saw his look, but the word still plunged into her heart like a blade when they came, colder and blunter than she’d heard her husband speak in years.

“No.”

Tears pricked the back of her eyes instantly and she curled her fingers into tight fists at her sides, using the sting of her nails cutting into her palms to ground her. Still, her voice was strangled by the lump in her throat when she answered.

“That’s it? That’s all I get? _No_?” Visceral rage rose up in her throat like bile as he returned to his paperwork, though she could see the tension still coiled in his body as he resumed writing, his fingers unnaturally poised and careful as he guided the ink across the page. “Why?”

“We’ve already talked about it.”

The empty smoothness of his tone - the same one he used when he was talking to a troublesome noble or minister - only angered her more, but she couldn’t deny that he was speaking the truth.

Katara had wanted a baby since she’d been little more than a baby herself. That want had matured with her, growing deeper and stronger as she’d aged and the dust of a hundred years of war began to settle around her. Zuko’s position had tended to lean further into _need_ than want, though his plethora of feelings around the subject were so densely tangled he’d never really known for certain what his heart said. He was the Fire Lord, but also the last viable progenitor for a line that had extended through centuries before his birth. The assumption was always that he _would_ have his own offspring, but Zuko had been happy enough to leave it in the vague realms of _someday_. That had begun to change when he’d accepted his heart was irreversibly falling into the hands of a certain master waterbender. He’d known about her more acute desire for a child, so he had been straight with her right from the early, fumbling stages of their relationship. 

They would have a family, but he wanted to wait. That he had always made clear and back then, Katara had been happy to agree. What was a few years when you were a teenage girl, flush with new love, and a vast future unfolding ahead?

The flaw came in his neglect to specify exactly how _long_ he wanted to wait.

Waiting had been so easily explained at the dawn of their marriage. He had the whole world at his back, watching with bated breath for him to fall, to either death at the hands of an assassin or the same darkness that had consumed his forefathers. She had the entire Fire Nation circling her like sharks, still unsure if they were going to tolerate her presence - a veteran, sure, but still a girl from the Southern Water Tribe - as the wife of their sovereign, as the mother of their next. They were still so young, still learning about themselves and the world without war around them that they’d never known a day of before. Of course the time wasn’t right for there to be children around. 

But it’d been more than three years now and the sources of his excuses were falling away like leaves in the throes of autumn. The groups mongering for his removal, some for his killing, had been silenced. The Fire Nation had successfully bounced back into a flourishing peacetime economy. The country was healing, growing, changing, and as a result, they’d accepted their new Fire Lady - some with more welcome than others, but none with open threat. He and Katara had grown older, wiser. The scars of the war, of their childhoods, were as healed as they could ever dare to expect.

His wife longed for a baby so keenly now that he likened it to grief. He could feel it in his heart, every hour of every day, as powerfully as if the emotions were his own. He could feel it that very moment, stabbing into him like needles. He wanted to apologise, to get on his knees and beg at her feet - for forgiveness, for more time, for her to _understand_ \- but he knew it would not comfort her. Only one thing would do that and he couldn’t give it to her.

Katara held back her tears from spilling - she was the Fire Lady, Chief Hakoda and Kya’s daughter, the Avatar’s master, the last Southern waterbender; she wasn’t going to cry at every disappointment thrown her way - but they refused to leave her eyes, brimming beneath her lids and blurring her vision.

“It’s only a matter of time before they start asking you to set me aside for another woman.”

“And why would they do that?”

“They didn’t approve of me back then because they said I wouldn’t be able to bear you a firebending child. They’re certainly not going to stay silent and tolerate me now that they think that I can’t bear you _any_ children.”

The way that Zuko’s head snapped up to look at her once more, blinking as surprise overrode the suffocating discomfort of the atmosphere, was a relief in a small way. The shock at her statement meant that the subject hadn’t been broached to him yet. She knew it was coming, though. She’d seen the way the ministers, counsellors, advisers, nobility, _everyone_ , would fall silent in their whispers when she passed by, their eyes lingering at her flat, hollow abdomen.

It was no real threat to her. She had no doubt whatsoever that Zuko would tell each and every one of them to go to hell - he’d done it on her behalf more than once before - but it was still hard to bear, not when she so desperately wanted the very thing they denigrated her for not having.

Zuko wavered for a moment. She could see in his face that he understood how much that reality had to hurt her, but his resolve remained.

“Why do you _care_ what they think?” he demanded defensively. “Their opinions are hardly of any real worth, Katara. You know that. The Fire Nation is still mediocratic. Atleast half of the people around us are only here because their great-great-great grand-something might have known a _bit_ about politics a hundred years ago, and for some reason the positions were made hereditary. They’re mostly fools, fools with _‘noble’_ blood, but fools nonetheless. I just haven’t found a way to get rid of them yet.” The fire contained within him dimmed a little as he closed his eyes, took a steadying breath in, and continued on with a more controlled tone. “You know the reason that you’ve not been pregnant yet. You know that you’re not barren. That’s what matters.”

Rationally, Katara knew she should take advantage of his regained composure to initiate a calm, measured, adult conversation about this. She was good at that usually, being the voice of reason, but her rationality had fled her tonight.

“ _Do_ I know? How could I be certain that I’m _not_ infertile? We’ve never tested it out, have we? My womb might not be good enough for _Fire Lord Zuko’s_ children after all.” she antagonised him bitterly, both regretting and relishing in the words as they lashed from her tongue with vehemence.

Zuko’s eyes returned to the page before him but she knew he saw no words - only red. His knuckles were white as he gripped the brush handle in his fist. “Stop it, Katara.” he warned.

Katara paid him no heed. 

She _loved_ Zuko, so deeply and vitally - even now when she was so desperate to make him hurt and share in her sorrow, her heart ached for everything with him - but the cycle of waiting, watching, hoping, only to be let down each time, year after year, had inevitably stirred a festering pit of resentment in her. She couldn’t resist garnering some sort of cathartic satisfaction as she watched the vitriol she was throwing at him build up anger like a volcano about to erupt. 

“Maybe those fools, as you put it, were right about us.” She could feel the rolling anticipation in her gut, like she was running head-long towards the edge of a cliff. “Maybe you should have found some desperate, power-hungry Fire Nation noblewoman to fuck instead, like they recommended you do.” She couldn’t stop herself. “There seems to be plenty of them around here, throwing themselves in your path.” She jumped from the cliff. “Maybe you’d have preferred one of them because their children wouldn’t have posed potential problems for you, would they? They’d be _pure_ -”

The calligraphy brush snapped under the force of his grip.

“ _Enough_!” 

His yell was loud enough to mostly mask the wooden legs of his desk screeching against the stone floor as he pushed to his feet. The flames lighting the sconces on the wall leapt up in union with him, hissing with the sheer force of his chi controlling them.

Other people might have been intimidated by him - many were when he stood tall in the throne room, the sphere of fire around his seat roaring so high the flames licked the ceiling, or when he stared down from the end of the council chamber - but not Katara. She was there, right up in his face as sparks showered down with his breath.

“ _I’m_ the one who has had enough, Zuko.” she yelled right back at him, the tips of her fingers beginning to bite with ice. “I have given up so much to be here, to live this life with you, and all I-, I-”

Her tirade stammered to a halt as all the fury drained out of Zuko’s eyes, like she’d pulled a cork, and was replaced by something that twisted her insides.

“No. Don’t-, don’t you feel that.” she ordered, her stern voice at odds with her fingers curling into his collar and holding tight. “I didn’t say that to make you feel guilty or indebted to me. It was _my_ choice and I made it because I wanted you, because I _love_ you - more than I could ever really say in a word.” Her other hand reached up to brush her fingers down the blemished creases of skin of his face. “I said it because I want you to _respect_ that, to treat me like I’m on your team again. You’re putting me off and turning me away every time and now... now you’re so far away that I feel all alone.” She blinked and the well of tears gathered in her eyes spilled over. “I can’t live like that. Not again. I want - I _need_ \- all of you, here with me.”

Zuko stood frozen and wordless, his only action being the hand that came to rest over her own buried in the neck of his robes.

“Please talk to me, Zuko.” Katara whispered.

He tried. His mouth opened to release a translation of the feeling that had plagued his mind so doggedly, but nothing came. His silence fell down on her like a crushing disappointment. She stifled a sob as she pulled away towards the door, taking one step, then two. The third she only made by half as she felt his hand close around her wrist - careful to be gentle, but firm enough she couldn’t wrench free.

“Let go of me!” she snarled, tears openly streaming down her face now.

He shook his head. “You promised.”

It took her a second to understand what he meant, her brain in a white-out of upset, but then the fitting memory surfaced - their wedding night on Ember Island, tangled in the sheets as a balmy breeze floated through the patio doors swayed the air of the bedroom, the sea making them a hushed melody with the shore just a little way down the path.

_“Katara?” he called quietly, the moonlight turning the sheen of sweat on his face a snow white._

_“Yeah?” she answered, her voice equally as soft, her head pillowed on his arm as she dragged her fingertips up and down the ridges of his bare stomach rhythmically._

_He looked down at her. “When we get mad at each other sometimes-”_

_She cut off his words as she rolled to her side, her torso leaned over his chest. “Who says we’re ever going to get mad at each other?” she said, offering a jesting smile as she reached forward to brush the sable strands that had strayed over his face back behind his ear._

_“We’re only human, Katara.” he chuckled, reciprocating the gesture by teasing his fingers through her locks as she laid her check on his sternum. “We’re going to argue sometimes and that’s okay, I think. We can learn from it - from each other - and go on, but only if we don’t walk away from it when it happens.” His hand drifted down from her hair and smoothed down her back, his touch warm against her cooled skin. “_ _I never want to go to sleep angry with you, or knowing that you’re angry with me. Not one night.”_

_“Me neither.” Katara answered promptly._

_After a few beats of quiet, she lifted her head to look at her husband, the gold of his eyes cutting through the dark._

_He offered her his smallest finger. “Promise?”_

_She coiled her own matching digit around his as she leaned into him._

_“Promise.” she murmured before she slid a hand behind his head and pulled his lips to hers.  
_

So much had changed since then, Katara thought with a shade of mournfulness as the memory faded back into the recesses of her mind.

“I promised that because I thought we’d always be able to talk through our problem. How are we supposed to do that if you won’t speak openly with me?” The memory had soothed her enough to keep her at the table, but not enough to temper the extent of her frustrations as she said with a snap: “For the spirits’ sake, just be _honest_ with me.” 

Zuko was a wild animal that she’d backed into the corner, eyes darting side to side for an escape before he finally blurted: “I-, I’m still afraid.”

There it was. The real reason that had underscored every logical excuse he’d ever offered. Everything clicked so neatly into place.

Zuko was still _afraid_.

This wasn’t exactly news to her. He’d admitted the prospect of children frightened him once before, an explanation to her for his poor reaction when Gran Gran had challenged him as to when she could expect great-grandchildren. He feared there was malevolence inherent in his blood, a conclusion that Iroh had unwittingly stoked in his nephew when he’d offered up Sozin and Roku as opposing symbols for his moral conflict, used the words _‘nature’_ and _‘legacy’_ to illustrate the comparison. Zuko had always interpreted that parable rather too literally, encouraging him to believe that he could bring a child into the world already warped by his family’s dogma from birth. Katara had eventually persuaded him of the innocence of children - that no child was born good or bad, only a metaphorical ball of clay for the parents to mould, but then that had led him to another unease even more difficult for him to reconcile with.

After everything he’d done in his life, who was _he_ to be trusted to show a child right from wrong?

He was a good man and he was more than fit to rear their child. She did her best to tell him as much whenever the opportunity presented itself, but it was cognitive dissonance for him - the image of himself in his head versus the words she said never quite matching up to ring true enough. She’d hoped that time and his work fixing the Fire Nation would heal that disconnect for him, enough that he could rationalise his worries into something productive. But that moment in the igloo where they’d talked, that had been almost three years ago now. As much as he continued to face adversities, the fruits of Zuko’s virtue were growing all around, too, and yet he still didn’t see.

Sokka, Suki, Toph, Mai, her dad, Gran Gran, virtually everyone they knew, would almost certainly say the cure to his fretting was a kick up the ass. Aang would naturally advise a gentler approach and Katara had favoured that course, but it had gotten them nowhere in years.

Maybe a kick up the ass wouldn’t be so bad for him after all.

“Oh, Zuko,” she sighed as he released her wrist. “I’m sorry, but that fear is never going to leave you. The day you’re waiting for - the one when you wake up in the morning and your fear is miraculously gone and everything feels perfect - it’s not coming. No more than the day you wake up with no scar is.”

Katara had expected that this was going to hurt him in a way similar to the ripping off a very old bandage. She was taking away from him the dream that there would come a day soon where he wasn’t scared, but the physical flinch that jolted through his body was more than she could have predicted.

“It has to.” he answered after a moment of reeling for a better counter-argument. The firmness of his voice, the urgent need for it to be so in his eyes, tugged at her bruised heart but she stayed strong.

“No. It doesn’t,” she asserted. “-because every parent has that worry - or every _decent_ one, anyway. Every mother and father question whether they’re doing enough, whether they’re doing it _right_ , and that’s okay because it’s that doubt that pushes you to try your best, always.” His eyes widened as his face seemed to slacken with something - relief, she hoped, though it was probably contrarily mixed with some devastation, too. “Zuko, my mother _died_ for me. And it’s not just that she sacrificed herself - it’s that she was gone before she could make any mistakes. To me, she’s perfect and she always will be.” She choked out a sardonic laugh, the thought of her mother bringing fresh tears to her eyes. “How am I ever supposed to compare myself to that and be satisfied?”

He snapped out of his stupor at that, lurching forward to take her hands into his. “Katara, you’ll be-”

“A great mom.” she finished, the phrase bouncing around in her head with the reverberation of an empty hall. “People have been telling me that all my life. _You_ keep telling me. But vice versa, I tell you that you’ll be a great father and do you listen to me?”

“I do listen.” he insisted, squeezing her hands for emphasis. “It’s just... I worry.”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed.” Her smile was watery, but a smile nonetheless and Zuko returned it. “It might not feel like it, but worrying is good. It means you care and I know when you care, you give it your all. That’s enough for a kid.”

Zuko released a breath and stood a little taller, like someone had removed a tremendous weight from his shoulders. “I’m so sorry, Katara. For this. For everything. I never wanted to hurt you, but settling down has always been so important to you; the thought that I’d mess our family up and the impact that’d have on you...”

She crossed her arms over her middle and curled her lip into a half-smile. “You really think that I would _let_ you mess this up?” 

“Yeah, I guess not.” He looked over her in utter admiration, thanked every spirit that was listening that she’d chosen him of all people, and pulled her into him. She was quick to respond, wrapping her arms around his neck and nestling her head beneath his chin as he held her tight. “Maybe we could start-”

Katara pulled back and clamped her palm over his mouth before he could finish.

“Don’t say yes to me now. Take some time to settle with this and get your head straight. A baby is still a whole lot more than a spur of the moment decision. Or the first one is, atleast. I hear things get a little more fast and loose once you get passed the firstborn.”

“Are you sure?”

“What the hell,” Katara smiled as she folded him into another embrace. “I’ve waited this long. The time will come when it’s meant to.”


End file.
